Fake Teabaggers Are Anti-Spend, Anti-Government: Real Populists Want to Stop Banks from Plundering America

By Mark Ames and Yasha Levine and Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted April 15, 2009.

Luckily, and not a moment too soon, this is no longer the case.

It is hard to imagine more different origins from the FreedomWorks creation than those of A New Way Forward. The seed for the initiative was planted on the ratty couch in a 19th century farmhouse on a western Massachusetts apple orchard. It was there that 29-year-old Tiffiniy Cheng sat one night watching Bill Moyers Journal with her 86-year-old landlord. Moyers' guest that night was MIT professor and former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson. A fierce critic of Obama's handling of the crisis, Johnson explained on the show that there were plenty of roads not being taken, all of which led to nationalization and strict new antitrust laws.

As they listened, Cheng and her landlord grew increasingly despondent. When the show ended, the old woman turned to the younger woman and said, "You kids need to go out and do something. The world is changing so much, you need to take control of things." Cheng decided to take up the challenge.

"I knew a lot of people like me were upset that the banks are driving the process," she says. "So I decided to coordinate among all of the frustrated people out there, who are angry about the bailouts and want to break up the massive institutions who brought us here."

Unlike a lot of people who might have shared the same thought, Cheng actually had the organizing experience and tech chops to do put it together. A self-described nonprofit "technologist" and activist with a decade of experience -- she was part of the group that launched OpenCongress.org and has developed software designed to facilitate Internet organizing — Cheng sketched out a plan and called some colleagues.

Soon they had a manifesto based on three principles: nationalize, reorganize and decentralize. A Web site followed, and word quickly spread with the help of some well-connected and supportive advisers, among them Zephyr Teachout and Joe Trippi, both architects of Howard Dean's pioneering 2004 presidential campaign.

Aided by social-networking sites and Cheng's own organizing software, more than 10,000 soon signed NWF's petition to break up the banks. The petition now holds more than 40,000 signatures and counting.

Last Saturday, NWF held the first day of rallies — the left's answer to the Tea Parties. Groups in the hundreds gathered in 60 cities around the country (including on the East Coast, despite heavy rains). The organization is also picking up its share of media attention, including a mention last month on Moyers’ Journal, which brought the nascent group full circle.

"Having been around politics and political organizing for many years, this feels different," says William Greider, a New Way Forward senior adviser. "The 'Tea Party' gambit is the opposite example -- planned and promoted top-down with the old hands of the right and lots of money. One of our democratic difficulties in this mass-market age is figuring out what's real and what's cleverly constructed propaganda."

It's hard to get more real than the first line of the NWF manifesto: "Big bankers ruined our economy, and now they are gaming the political system so they can profit even more off the crisis they caused. They must be stopped."

Stopping the big bankers from plundering America. That's what protest against the administration's economic policy must be about.

And whatever the Tea Party organizers scream today while standing on tea boxes, their sponsors at FreedomWorks have no intention of ending the plunder.

Instead, FreedomWorks and its clients want to ensure more of the national wealth is at their disposal — which for them means more deregulation, lower taxes for the rich, fewer government programs for distressed homeowners and no pricey national health insurance.

The suckers in the Tea Party movement have no idea that while their anger is genuine, they're doing the king's bidding, not their own.

See more stories tagged with: obama, conservatives, taxes, tea bag

Mark Ames and Yasha Levine are editors of eXiledonline.com. Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »